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"The climax of every tragedy lies in the deafness of its heroes." - Albert Camus, Compiler's Notes; This entry was written sometime in June 1945. Its authenticity has been verified by I, myself, after close comparison to two other authentic documents. After it was lost it was believed to have fallen into the hands of Albert Camus who, although he deemed it false, used the woman as a reference for his great work "Le Chute". After Camus was killed in an automobile crash in Sens, 1960, all his possessions went to his daughter, Catherine Camus and following the semi-apocalypse of 2003. A source of mine located it in the ruins of a town house in Paris. Despite minor damage, and its rather archaic Arabic text, I was able to translate it here, although the tense has been changed to make it easier to read, as Azrael's earlier tense was rather difficult and somewhat confusing. The Germans had gone. The Germans had gone, but a strange feeling of occupation still hung over Paris. A feeling of defeat, a broken people, left to rebuild everything but with no idea where to begin. He had seen many here, Nazi and French alike, but most had been French, most had been civilians, resistance. The war had kept him busy. Wars were always good for business, and with the Third Reich's penchant for "relocation camps" like Dachau, Belsen and Auswich, he had always been rushed off his feet. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been worse, the memory still sends a shiver down his spine. The incineration, the black rain, the screams, the thought alone haunted him, and he could still see their faces, all their faces. Those incinerated, the women, the children, they were the lucky ones. Those who survived died slowly and painfully, the radiation brought cancer, leukaemia, tumours, and mutation. Even Sodom and Gomorrah had been less horrific, and he himself had been the architect of that genocide. If the humans had fallen so far to use such weapons on their own kind, perhaps Lucifer had been right about them after all. He pushed the thought from his mind and flashed a quick glance across the street, she hadn't appeared yet. He looked at his watch, but what he saw had no meaning, just roman numerals and miniature hands. To one who had lived as long as he had, there is no sense of time. It becomes skewed, distorted, a twisted parody of what it once was. Short minutes could feels like years, and an eternity could feel like fleeting seconds. There was no sense of past or future, only the here and now, only the moment. It sounded like a childish notion, "living in the moment", and even he had been young once. The thought brought a smile to his face, no, he had always been old, always been as he is. His kind don't change, they always stay the same. It was his blessing. It was his curse. The toll for which was a heavy price, an eternity of unending servitude to Him. She stepped out of the alley in the deserted street, le rue de la condamné. Right on time. They were always on time, and at times it really made his job a bore. Predictability was not the most desirable aspect in a job, but this wasn't merely his job, this was his career. He watched her as she crossed the street, her sadness apparent through her motions, like a broken-hearted ballet dancer tiptoeing melancholy across the stage. She had been an actress once, but that had been a long time ago, that had been before the war. The moonlight on her face showed that the beauty that had once won her adoration on the stage had faded, leaving a heavy face etched in sorrow. She ignored him, walking right past down the dark street. It was not ignorance, she merely could not see him, none of them could unless he willed it, and it was not yet time. He turned and followed her, knowing where she was heading. To her Destination finale. As she manoeuvred eerily silent streets of Paris, it seemed only fitting that he should recant her tale of woe as some solemn obituary. Once she was a star, a wife, a mother, she was happy. Now she is none. Her husband had been lost amidst the fighting, he knew that, he had taken him on the first day at the Somme. Her child had died of pneumonia, unable to receive the medical treatment need due to the occupation. But it was the rape that had done the most damage. It had been a dark night on her way home from the stroll, she was dragged kicking and screaming into the alley by the group of them, and left used and beaten on the cold, hard concrete. The Germans were brutal, and their attacks had left their toll on the poor girl, she was lucky to survive the night, most didn't, he knew that. The mental scars never heal, they always stay with you, and they eat away at your soul, leaving void where emotion once flourished. The carefree day of her childhood in Bordeaux seemed almost non-existent in her now, forced prostitution days in post-war Paris. Selling her body to strangers was not what she wanted to do for a living, but all she had ever known was acting, and with no acting jobs available and with no other work skills, this is all she could do to avoid starvation. Every night she would make the long walk home to an empty home, an empty bed, but not tonight. Tonight she would make it no further than the Pont-Royal. Stepping onto the bridge, she reached the last pirouette in this danse macabre, all that remained was for her to throw herself from the parapet. She steps up onto the stone and hesitates, swaying in the cool breeze. Tears streamed from her eyes, as she contemplated her drop into the freezing Seine below. The whole situation seemed absurd. It reminded him of an essay he had read while waiting for a soldier to die in a war hospital one day, two or three years back. It had claimed, "There is but only one serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." To her there was no question. Throughout the war she had been sustained by her hopes of returning to stardom when France was freed, but the freedom had come, and her stardom had not. Humans could live with anything except hope. Now it had all come down to this, a gaunt body standing on a parapet swaying between life and death. He would have cried if he were capable. He wanted to cry out, to grab her, anything to stop her from jumping but he knew he could not. It was meant to happen. In some places it had already happened. He could not explain it, even though it seemed simple to him, it was far too complex for humans to understand. No, there was no way he could change what was meant to happen, and with that, he turned his back to the scene. Splash. She is limp when she hits the water. No struggle. He watched as the life drained from her. There is beauty in watching someone drown without struggle, ultimately giving in. Every cell in the body is screaming for you to fight, but you just surrender to the darkness, and the darkness swallowed her whole. Everyday she did her best, tried to survive, and this is where it had led her, the bottom of a muddy Paris river. It didn't take long for her to drown, as he stood testament gazing down from the parapet, the only witness, the only one who would care. They wouldn't even find her body for three weeks, when it would wash up further downstream, but there would be no one to identify it. No one cares. He carried them in his heart, all of them. Someone had to remember, and as the Angel of Death, it was his duty. He took out his book and scanned the page for the name Marie Porchet, crossing it through with this pen. In the end, it was all that remained of their lives. A crossed out name in an old book. Even his name was in there, one day his day would come. But not yet, no he was to be the omega, he was to be last of all who is not He. With that he turned his back and walked away from the Pont-Royal. Like Camus, he preferred to leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. |